Extracts from the Mar 2005 Journal

Each of the first three months of the year contains a day commemorating 'a turning point in history when history refused to turn'. They are the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945, the collapse of Tsarism in Russia in February 1917, and the almost Europe-wide liberal revolutions of March 1848. [more...]

If you were a German-speaking refugee who came to Britain either as one of the 'Kinder' or as an adult between 1933 and 1950, or if you are a descendant, and are in possession of any papers, letters or photographs relating to those experiences, would you like to see them listed on a unique data base being compiled by the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex for scholars of the period? [more...]

In modern Europe antisemitism has always been a political weapon of the right (for all that some early socialists like Proudhon vilified the Jews as the vanguard of capitalism). Only in Britain have things not been so clear-cut as that because the (baptised) Jew Disraeli both led a Tory government at a crucial time in world affairs and coined the phrase 'One Nation Conservatism', which still has a resonance in current politics. [more...]

On Tuesday 25 January, two days before the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the AJR held a memorial service at the Belsize Square Synagogue in northwest London. Some 150 people took part in the gathering, the venue of which had to be changed from the AJR Day Centre owing to the overwhelming demand for seats. At the deeply moving service, memorial candles were lit and Rev Larry Fine read out the names of over 450 family members of those present who perished in the Holocaust. [more...]

Turkey, with its whirling dervishes, warlords, dancing slave girls, insouciant sultans and secretive sensuality, fires the romantic Western imagination. The fantasy is fed by Turkey's peculiar position as it straddles two continents: Europe and Asia. What became the Ottoman Empire had its roots in a disparate and nomadic tribespeople who roamed Inner Asia over 1,000 years ago. Turks, the Royal Academy's celebrated exhibition, charts their artistic development from the time when the Turkic peoples, considered barbarians by the Chinese, entered the steppes of Western Eurasia and founded an empire in Mongolia and the Altai. Traces of this poly-ethnic and multi-lingual culture survive in primitive human and animal sculpture, resembling Aztec art, and runic, Turkic scripts. [more...]

Israeli bank account list

Under the terms of the report of the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee for the Location and Restitution of Assets of Holocaust Victims, Israeli banks will have to pay NIS 41.2 million (approximately £5.25 million) and the Israeli government NIS 100.8 million (approximately £12.5 million) in compensation to the owners of dormant bank accounts. [more...]